Koichi Yamamoto was born in Osaka, Japan in 1967. In 1983, at age 16, he moved to Dayton, Wyoming in the USA. Yamamoto completed his Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) at the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon in 1992. He then moved to Krakow, Poland in a search for lithography stones. He continued producing works in Warsaw, Poland until 1993 and attended Bratislava Academy of Fine Arts in Slovakia in 1994, where he studied copper engraving with printmaker Dusan Kallay. In 1995 he produced a series of monotypes at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznan, Poland. He later worked as a textile designer in Fredericia, Denmark.

Yamamoto moved to Alberta, Canada and graduated with an MFA from the University of Alberta in 1999. From 2000 to 2006, he was Assistant Professor at Utah State University in Logan, Utah and Assistant Professor at University of Delaware in Newark, Delaware before moving to the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN.

Yamamoto has commented about his work: “When I was about five years old, my uncle brought home a red snapper. He inked the fish, then printed it on shoji paper. This ‘gyotaku’, along with eating the “plate,” made a strong and lasting impression on me.” and further: “When I was learning copper engraving in Bratislava, Slovakia, my professor Dusan Kallay told me; ‘First you have to learn ice skating.’ I never excelled at that, but became proficient at snowboarding while living in Utah. It’s the process of understanding the material you are carving, whether ice, snow, wood, or copper.”

He has had one-person exhibitions at Brookhaven College, Dallas, Texas (2007); the Salt Lake Art Center (2001); Illinois State University (1999); the Szynkiewicz Museum in Poznañ, Poland (1996). Recent juried print competitions that include his work have been the Boston Printmakers (2007); the 7th Bharat Bhavan International Biennial Print Art, New Delhi, India (2006); and the Lujubljana International Printmaking Exhibition, Slovania (1999). His prints are in the collections of University of Hawaii at Hilo; the Vivian and Gordon Gilkey Graphic Center in the Portland Art Museum; and the University of Alberta Museum and Collection, Edmonton, Canada.